Eunhae Han’s Reviews > How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill > Status Update

approaches. So for me, revision is a combination of cutting away (like sculpting the sentence from stone) and also a constant layering of the language (like working with the sentence as you would clay.
The palimpsestic layering part of the process often leads to sudden surprises-puns, oracles, and revelations-that I'm always looking

Character: based them on a principle, drawing them from real people, basing them on myself, or basing them on his historical figure figures

I try, as I rework and revise, to remember a note I made to myself in my writer's notebooks: "In great fiction the main element of importance is the fusion of character and event, their interplay, the way the latter reveals the former, and the way the former leads inevitably to the latter. One must also see how event transforms character even as it is produced by character."

I try to make sure each paragraph can justify its being on the page. That is, each paragraph should have at least one good idea in it. Or do something to advance the story. Or enrich the details of the world in which the story is taking place or the characterizations of its people. I work at being

I'm constantly rethinking a story's beginning as I work on the middle and end.) Sometimes my ratio of throwaway to keep pages is 20:1. From the third draft forward, I work at varying sentence length in every paragraph and also varying sentence formsI see each sentence as being a unit of energy. The music and meaning of each sentence and paragraph must carry into the next and contribute to a larger rhythmic design.

Real fun begins on the third draft

90% of good writing is rewriting. often hear that 90 percent of good writing is rewriting. We also know that writing well is the same thing as thinking well, and that means we want our final literary product—story, novel, or essay—to exhibit our best thought, best feeling, and best technique.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.
—Rumi

When I was five, _
2. What I think about God:
3. My father always_
4. I miss the smell of

What I said was
was
6. Last night I dreamt about _
7. My mother always said
8. While the family gathered at the I would.
9. I wish I could remember _
_ but what I meant

_, but all I remember
10. Sunlight hitting the floor from the window made me remember

Writers are often taught (and rightly so) the craft of language economy-the use of as few words as possible to convey a point.
And, generally, this makes for a smoother style and less laborious text. However, sometimes, in order to establish a Black rhythmic pulse in written discourse, one needs more words, more instruments with which to play the symphonic complexity of Black life.